Editorial Board
After Troops Leave, Obama Must Stay Engaged in Afghanistan: View
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World leaders can look at the same events and interpret them in radically different ways. So it is with President Barack Obama’s June 22 announcement to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.
Obama plans to bring home 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, an additional 23,000 by the summer of 2012, and all U.S. combat forces by 2014. From his perspective, the U.S. is “starting this drawdown from a position of strength” -- al-Qaeda has been weakened, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the Taliban have suffered “serious losses.”